Schoeck_2010_EnvyATheoryOfSocialBehaviour.pdf

204 ENVY AS THE SUBJECT OF PHILOSOPHY
cede our own. But our gratitude towards our 'contemporaries is but
meagre-indeed, in order to conceal the inequality that lies between us
and them it may well become the very opposite' -namely, hatred and
animosity.
To Kant ingratitude is a reprehensible vice not only because its
example may cause men to desist from benefactions and hence diminish
the amount of mutual human aid (which no social system can dispense
with entirely), but also because 'it is as though love were turned upside
down and a mere lack of love further debased into an urge to hate the
person who loves us. ,17
Kant believes, however, and experience has repeatedly proved him
right, that a display of ingratitude will not necessarily bring about a
decrease in benefactions, because the benefactor 'may well be convinced
that the very disdain of any such reward as gratitude only adds to the
inner moral worth of his benefaction.'
However, I would add, benefaction in the face of hostile ingratitude
only serves to intensify the passion and the principle of ingratitude, the
giver having proved himself so much bigger, better and more unassailable
than he previously appeared. Most of the observations made
between 1955 and 1965 in areas receiving aid from the major industrial
countries provide what is tantamount to experimental proof of Kant's
maxims. This large-scale example of international benefaction is peculiarly
clear because in the age of the Cold War only sovereign governments
as opposed to private recipients could afford to show immediate
and ostentatious ingratitude, an ingratitude almost proportionate to the
benefits received.
Before Kant's discussion of the family of envy, and hence of ingratitude,
he also examined the duty of gratitude, and in doing so he
indirectly touched on some of the problems of envy.
That gratitude is a moral obligation essential for a peaceful society is
deduced by Kant from the ineluctable fact, arising from our existence in
a time-continuum, that 'no requital of a benefaction received can ever
absolve us of the debt. ,18
The recipient can never catch up with the giver because the latter, from
17 Op. cit., p. 317.
18 Op. cit., p. 312.